Abstract
In the context of Asia, the changing dynamics of higher education has increased the visibility and significance of the group of intraregional education migrants. There are several methodological issues which need to be addressed in conducting research for this group of migrants. First, how does the particular type of migrant group and Asian context influence the research design? Second, in order to capture the scale and diversity of this migrant group, how should research be conducted across multiple sites? Third, how does a mixed method design allow researchers to learn more about the behaviour, practice and orientations of education migrants? Our paper aims to make contributions to the discussions on the methods of education migration research in Asia through answering these questions. We use research experiences and preliminary data from a multinational project to illustrate the issues involved in the selection of methods, research design and project management.
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Notes
This research project was conducted from September 2009 to November 2012. A mixed-method approach was used for collecting comprehensive data. Over 4,000 international students hosted by nine universities in five Asian countries were surveyed. About 198 international students, 86 university officials and 86 alumni were interviewed. In terms of geographical coverage, the sample includes nine universities (National University of Singapore, Tokyo University, Osaka University, Asia Pacific University, Renmin University, Sun Yat-sen University, Seoul National University, Korean University and National Taiwan University) located in five countries (Singapore, Japan, South Korea, China and Taiwan).
Information obtained from Ministry of Education and Human Resource Development, Republic of Korea. Retrieved from: http://unpan1.un.org/intradoc/groups/public/documents/apcity/unpan015416.pdf.
Besides the case of Singapore where the project investigator (PI) came from, 3 members of the team are in participating universities and facilitated the securing of permission from their university. Two of these senior team members were also active in obtaining permission from the second university in the country. Another team member while not belonging to the participating university had enough credibility to get permission from this university on account of being from another prestigious university in the same city. Two of the cases required the use of personal ties (guanxi in Chinese) through graduate students of the PI to connect to their home country professors in order to obtain permission. In another university, the PI’s relationship with one former university president was mobilized to facilitate the permission process. This process was long-drawn-out and anxious. We had to find replacements for two universities after failing to get permission because of the lack of strong connections. In one of these failures, the professor we invited to the preparatory meeting was too junior to wield influence with senior university management. The other failure was the inability to find a well-connected research partner professor who was committed to the project.
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The GUISM project is funded by the Singapore Ministry of Education (AcRF Grant R111-000-069-112).
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Ge, Y., Ho, K.C. Researching international student migration in Asia: research design and project management issues. J Pop Research 31, 197–217 (2014). https://doi.org/10.1007/s12546-014-9129-1
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DOI: https://doi.org/10.1007/s12546-014-9129-1